Dr Olejnik's Work Results in Removal of Browser Battery API for Privacy Reasons

Firefox and WebKit (the engine behind Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome) recently revealed plans (FirefoxWebKit) to remove support for the Battery API in their browsers. This comes following research by Dr Lukasz Olejnik which highlighted the privacy implications of shipping a high-precision battery API, including fingerprinting and differential pricing. While the research suggested some forms of mitigation, the decision reached by the two groups was that the potential benefits and use cases of the API were unclear. In his blog, Dr Olejnik notes that this removal of functionality in favour of security is unprecedented in the history of the web.